


Where the lost things go

by OhAine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Discussion of past off page character death, F/M, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 10:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15639276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhAine/pseuds/OhAine
Summary: “Did you love my Mum, Sherlock?”He states it plainly – it is the truth after all. “Very much.”





	Where the lost things go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [satin_doll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/satin_doll/gifts).



> I wrote this last year as a Christmas gift for Kat and never got around to posting it. But it's been on my mind lately, so... You can blame Ellis Hendricks and likingthistoomuch who both encouraged me at different times to post.
> 
> Title and quote are taken from poet Anne Casey's Where the Lost Things Go. Un beta'd, I own nothing but the typos.
> 
> Warning for discussion of past, off page, character death. No offence taken if that's not your jam.

 

 

_‘We sat upon a golden bough, my little bird and I…An ocean we did cry for all the lost things gathered there, in rooms beyond the eye.'_

 

oOo

 

Sherlock stands by the living room door, staring, and instantly he is transported fifteen years into the past.

Were Mrs Hudson still alive she would have warned him about the client now sitting in a chair once occupied by her mother. She would have said:  _‘I think it’s time, Dear, don’t you? You knew she would come to ask one day. Be brave. Tell the truth and you’ll be fine.’_

Mrs Hudson would have been wrong. If he tells the truth nothing will ever be fine,  _nothing_ , not ever again.

Watson swings her feet, the toes of her boots scraping at the floor. She’s tiny, but then so was her mother. Her legs will never be long despite John’s insistence that she’s overdue for a growth spurt. At 5’2 she’s almost as tall as her adult mother was. Even at this distance, even with her back turned to him, she looks so much like her. 

Sherlock rarely sees the child ( _young woman now, surely?)_ not since John remarried and went into practice on Queen Anne Street, but when he does, what he feels always, _always,_ takes his breath away. 

It’s not any one thing: her hair is different, the teenager’s is shoulder length with dip-dyed pink ends (her mother wouldn’t disapprove of it, he can’t find it in himself to dislike it either), and she wears heavy eyeliner, too much mascara. She favours Doc Marten’s and skirts. But there’s something in the way she holds herself, something confident and strong despite her size, something that’s been transmitted through genetic memory despite the fact that they never knew each other, not really, that makes Sherlock feel as though he’s in the presence of a ghost.

He’s only dimly aware that she’s made tea, and set it on the small table at her elbow. When he thinks about it later he will realise that not only did she make his in his favourite mug, but made her own in her mother’s, though it’s been unused since her death, pushed to the back of a cupboard for safe keeping and to the best of his knowledge Watson had never even know it was there. 

A pang of sadness for all the things they’ve lost causes his chest to contract painfully. Sherlock crosses the room on shaky legs, his throat aching, swollen. Composes himself as best he can.

“I have a case for you,” she tells him without turning.

“I haven’t taken a private client in well over a decade and a half. My apologies Watson, but you’ve wasted a trip.”

“You’ll take this one,” her voice is soft and sweet. “Now sit, Sherlock.”

Half vexed, half amused, he gathers his dressing gown around himself and flops gracefully into the grey leather fireside chair that has survived all these years in much the same way he has: worn at the edges, softer than it used to be, but still structurally sound. Something in him eases because at last their eyes have met and she gives him that same cheeky smile that he remembers on another woman’s lips all those years ago. Her eyes, so sincere and warm, are attempting to telegraph comfort. Despite her young years, she has an instinct for making people at ease, and he wonders if that too is genetic or whether simply growing up with John to guide her has been enough to teach her so much about humanity, as it once taught him. Though he knows he should resist the sentimentality he feels, he can’t help it, he adores her every bit as much as he once did (still does) her mother.

A longing rises within him, vast, deep, to reach out and take her protectively into his arms, and for a moment –  _just a moment_  – pretend that everything had turned out differently. Sherlock breathes –  _in and out, in and out_  – until it passes and he’s once again master of his emotions.

“I know this is difficult because he’s your friend but before I ask you to do the thing I need you to do for me, I want you to tell me why you and my Dad had a falling out when I was little.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “That’s something you should speak to John about.”

“I have. And Uncle Greg. And anyone else who knew my parents. None of them would tell me what I wanted to know.”

“Then it’s unlikely that I will be able to—”

“I think it was because of my Mum,” she cuts him short, not exactly intolerant of where he’s inclined to take this conversation, but (he suspects) unwilling to allow him the illusion that she’ll be distracted or fobbed off. 

 _Watson,_  Sherlock thinks,  _has no idea how close to the bone she’s cutting_.

“Did you love her, Sherlock?”

He states it plainly – it is the truth after all. “Very much.”

“I don’t think my Dad did,” she touches her mouth: an involuntary act of self-comfort, one he knows well. “There are no pictures of them together, not one, like they never existed. No wedding photographs. Dad hasn’t kept anything of hers other than the things he’s kept for me.” Watson’s voice has taken on a rough edge, and Sherlock knows that she’s trying very hard not to cry. “His name wasn’t even on my birth certificate. Not until months later, after she died. Dad had to have it changed. Did you know that?”

Sherlock slumps a little in his chair. A deep frown has cut furrows into his brow. He could tell her that her parents marriage was in trouble before it had even properly begun, that they had been going through a particularly rough patch around the time she was born, that neither was sure if they could be with each other again, and that maybe her mother thought it would make things easier, simpler, if she chose to take her baby and just run away. But instead of burdening the child with the truth, he elects to tell her a version of it, a kinder one. It’s the version he tells himself when he allows his mind to dwell on the past. 

His hand trembles; he flexes it, wills it to steady. “She’d led a life – both your parents led a dangerous life – before you came along, one that she felt she needed to protect you from. She judged it best – safer – to not risk certain connections to you.”

“That may be the truth,” she says softly, raising her gaze to the ceiling only to let it drop again, fixing her eyes on his. He sees then that they are bright, shimmering. Defiantly, she pushes him, “But it’s not the whole of it. I don’t—” Her voice cracks, but she straightens her shoulders, takes a sip of her tea and starts over. “I don’t look anything like Dad. He hasn't kept any of my baby things, not even a copy of the ultrasound, even though he has a box full of that kind of stuff for my sisters. Don’t you think that’s strange, Sherlock? Isn’t that the kind of thing he would have kept?”

Something – a sense of dread – settles over Sherlock. Suddenly he’s cold, his heart beats too loudly in his ears. He feels jittery and paralysed all at once.

“I lived here, once?” She asks.

“With Mrs Hudson. Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Your father—” Sherlock stops, and doesn’t speak again for a long time. “After your mother died, he didn’t cope very well. It was deemed best that you were placed with friends until the situation improved. Mrs Hudson stepped in. Others too.”

“But not you?”

“No. Especially not me.”

“Because you were responsible for her death?”

Even now, so many years later, he finds it difficult to remember, to relive. To acknowledge that she died because of him. 

 “Yes.”

“Then why would Dad let me stay under the same roof as you?” 

“I was—” He begins the sentence without knowing how to finish it.  _Dragged kicking and screaming to rehab by Mycroft? So incapacitated by grief and the abuse my body suffered at my own hands that I was placed under a legal conservatorship that lasted for years? That no one trusted me to be anywhere near you. Or that I was deemed dangerous, unfit, even by those who loved me and knew me best?_  “I was away, not here.”

Watson shakes her head. Considering. “I asked Dad – about a month ago – why they’d given me this stupid, flowery name and he told me that Mum chose it, apparently she’d named me for someone in the family. So I looked and looked. Mum had no family – none that I could find – and there’s not a single Watson with the same name as me.” 

She gears herself up to say it, tucking a strand of that pink hair behind her ear, and gives Sherlock a look that pins him to the spot. “Logically, I might infer from the facts that I am not John Watson’s daughter. That I’m being lied to. So the case I’m bringing you is this: I want to know who my real father is, and I expect you to tell me the truth.”

Sherlock reaches for his tea – it’s gone cold now, but he drinks it anyway – doing anything he can to give himself just a few more moments before he answers. She won’t like what he has to say, but she wouldn’t understand how difficult a time it was, how hard the choices were. He would rather die than hurt her, so he’ll tell her the kindest lie he can, because, no, John Watson is not her father. Her biological father is a man who selfishly insinuated himself between her mother and the man she was soon to marry. But Sherlock won’t do anything to give away a secret he’s kept for years, one that would break her fragile little heart.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“You mean you  _won’t_  help me.” 

It takes a monumental effort to lift himself out of his chair, but he stands and crosses the room. 

The distance of between the fireside and door seems particularly long today. 

“To answer the subtext of your question which is did your mother ever betray your father, the answer is no, she did not," he says holding the door open, gesturing in no uncertain terms that the conversation is at an end and it’s time for her to leave. "Take a taxi. Go straight home. I'll let John know you're on your way. Good afternoon, Watson.”

Watson’s footsteps are heavy – those ridiculously large boots, he expects – but there’s not a trace of defeat in her. As she passes through the doorway, she stops.

“I love my Dad and my sisters,” Sherlock becomes acutely aware of her hand on his arm, fleeting, gentle, then it’s gone, “even my step mum. And I would love my father too, if he’d let me.” 

Her last words before kissing his cheek goodbye and making her way down the stairs are, “I'll be back next week. We'll talk more about it then.”

 

oOo

 

Back inside the flat Sherlock kneels on his bedroom floor, pulling the contents of his dresser on to the rug at his knees. A drawer is pulled out, emptied and turned upside down. His shaking fingers pull at the tape that holds an envelope on its underside until it falls free. Pictures, dozens of them spill all around him. Dates are written on the back of each, and in his own hand there are notations:  _at 3 months_ , says one,  _at six_  is written on another. Amongst them is one grainy image of a child still in her mother’s womb. He gathers them up, sits cross legged as he leafs through them until he finds the one he’s looking for, then fumbles for his mobile phone.

As he waits for the call to connect to John, he strokes the faded image of Molly. She is smiling, incandescently happy, her new born daughter in her arms, the picture taken before the ghosts of their pasts came back to haunt them in the form of James Moriarty’s brother. 

Sherlock of fifteen years ago sits on the edge of the hospital bed, his back to the camera, not knowing yet that someone else will have to rise to the challenge of the things he won't be able to do.

John’s voice on the other end of the line startles him, pulling him back to the here and now. “Sherlock?”

“In case you didn’t notice, you misplaced one of the younger Watsons today. Violet was just here,” he tells his friend.

“Shit.” John says. “Sorry. I should have kept a closer eye on her. She’s been a bit unsettled lately, asking about her Mum. What did she want? Answers about Molly?”

“No,” Sherlock’s voice breaks as Molly’s eyes smile at him. “Answers about me.”


End file.
